G-III's Goldfarb Maps the Path From One Jacket to a $3 Billion Group

G-III Apparel Group chairman and chief executive officer Morris Goldfarb, honored with the WWD Honor for Creative Leadership at the WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit, laid out the operating logic behind a company that grew from a single leather jacket into a $3 billion branded business carrying licenses for Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan and Karl Lagerfeld.

Speaking in conversation with Evan Clark, WWD's deputy managing editor, Goldfarb framed the transformation in sourcing and licensing terms rather than design terms. "So you want me to put 50 years, 54 years, into 15 minutes," he said.

How did a one-product company scale?

Goldfarb's father, Aron, founded the business as an immigrant livelihood. The original product line was minimal: a G-III branded 'Top Gun' jacket in brown, four sizes, nothing else. "It wasn't hard to design," Goldfarb said.

The company capitalized on movie-driven demand and went public. That listing forced a structural decision. "Either we transform the business into something broader than the one jacket or the one commodity, leather, or we lose," he said.

The template was Liz Claiborne. "Leadership was great, sourcing was great, sales were great. It was well positioned. I had a target of one day being like Liz Claiborne," Goldfarb said.

Sourcing drove the expansion. His father's New York factory constrained output: colored leather in a handful of styles, limited quantities, limited design freedom. South Korea removed those constraints. "Labor was malleable. The creative components that we could apply to creating products were endless. We took advantage of that and created other commodities in the coat business," Goldfarb said.

The decisive move came with the acquisitions of two coat companies, Marvin Richards and Winlit. Those deals delivered coat licenses for Calvin Klein and Guess, among others. "We took those relationships, we expanded classifications…and the rest is history," he said.

What changes with the Marc Jacobs deal?

G-III recently partnered with WHP to acquire Marc Jacobs from LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Founder Marc Jacobs remains on board. Goldfarb described a two-track integration: managing his first outside partner in WHP and retaining the founder's confidence.

The partnership with WHP "is an adjustment. You have a responsibility to your partner to share information, to share strategies," he said.

On Jacobs himself, Goldfarb was direct about the competitive disadvantage of a listed company against LVMH's patient capital. "We don't have the luxury that LVMH does, which is maybe, pain tolerance to build a brand. We are a public company. We are more driven by decisions that are more quarterly than 10-year horizons, and Bernard Arnault has earned the right to build and take his time," he said.

He acknowledged the structural tension plainly: "We're the victims of being public. He's not. He goes his own way, and if he goes down, he goes down. If our stock goes down, we do buy back stock but we make shorter-term decisions."

Does the Donna Karan precedent apply?

Goldfarb pointed to Donna Karan and DKNY, both unprofitable under LVMH before G-III bought them, as evidence the model works. "We put our own metrics in place as to what would constitute success, and we achieved it. And at the same time, respecting the integrity of the founder. Today, Donna is a great witness to what we accomplished. So Marc looks at that and says it's in the right hands," he said.

He stopped short of declaring the integration complete. "The jury's still out. Marc has some adjustments to make. G-III has some adjustments to make. So does WHP. In perfect candor, it seems like a great partnership, but adjustments are made when there are other people involved," Goldfarb said.

Who leads, and for how long?

His leadership approach, he said, has not changed: recruit specialists who offset his own weaknesses across finance, design, sourcing and sales. "Take the best. Give them freedom, guard them to the best extent to limit the failures and accept the failures and take ownership of the failures. That's my job. I led the charge. If somebody fails, I'm your partner," he said.

Succession is taking shape. His son, Jeff Goldfarb, is deeply engaged in the business. "It feels as if he's next, and he's got his own strategies and he's got his own strengths. Setting it up where most of the problems are behind when I step away would be a wonderful thing," Goldfarb said.

He put his obligation at roughly 15,000 people — shareholders plus the community the company created — and set his exit condition accordingly. "The moment that I feel that is done is the moment that I'll step away," he said, adding that staying curious and not overstaying his welcome is his formula for endurance through five decades of industry shifts.

For sourcing and licensing executives, the message from the summit was that G-III will keep trading short-cycle public-company discipline against the long-horizon brand building that private owners can afford, with the Marc Jacobs integration as the next test of that balance.